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Lecture Slides Design: Medical Students’ Preferences of Best Practices
Author(s) -
Tsai Olivia,
Wallace Clarissa,
Pinder Karen
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2021.35.s1.01617
Subject(s) - disk formatting , curriculum , consistency (knowledge bases) , checklist , medical education , class (philosophy) , standardization , quality (philosophy) , computer science , psychology , multimedia , medicine , pedagogy , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence , cognitive psychology , operating system
Large group lectures that are centred on PowerPoint (PPT) slide presentations are a ubiquitous instructional format during the pre‐clinical years of medical schools around the world, whether delivered virtually or in‐person. However, lecturers rarely receive formal training on how to design their lecture slides to optimize student learning. Consequently, due to the large number of faculty members delivering lectures in undergraduate medical curricula, there is wide variation in slide layout and organization. Cognitive load theory provides an established rationale for standardization of this aspect of lecture delivery. To assess students’ experiences and preferences with lecture slides design, a survey was distributed to students in the MD Undergraduate Program at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. The survey evaluated students' experiences with PPT slides in large group lectures through the entirety of their first year of medical school. Questions explored the perceived importance of lecture slides in understanding content, and satisfaction with slide formatting, quality and consistency. Over‐all, the majority of student responses rated the importance of lecture slides and their design and formatting to be “important” or “very important” elements for understanding a lecture during class (87%), and even more so for reviewing and studying after a lecture (93%). Specifically, students highlighted the need to address the quality and consistency of lecture slides in the curriculum and pointed to elements such as colour, layout, and image quality as areas for improvement. Results were used to formulate a one‐page checklist of best practices for slide design, which is now distributed to all lecturers in the UBC undergraduate medical curriculum. Major recommendations include addressing readability by using simple white backgrounds with black text, the provision of relevant and high‐quality graphics, and higher level session organization through the use of lecture objectives, tables and summary slides. Our results will be useful and of interest to all medical and allied health professionals who lecture using PPT slides.